With a Straight Face, McDonald’s Advises Employees how to Make the most of Their Meager Pay

McDonald’s, in partnership with Visa, have been ridiculed across the Web for offering up a budget (pdf) for minimum-wage employees to follow.

For starters, the plan assumes the employee must work two jobs, because one 35-hour a week position at $7.89 per hour only yields a little more than $1,100 a month. But with a second job, the worker could take home a beefy $2,060 each month.

With that income in mind, McDonald’s/Visa advised these spending limits, among others:

Rent: $600

Car payment: $150

Health insurance: $20

Food: $0

Clothing: $0

Food wasn’t listed in the budget, so perhaps McDonald’s assumed that cost would come out of the $27 for daily living it recommended.

Daniel Gross at The Daily Beast noted that if a McDonald’s employee is a teenager living at home, the budget might make sense. “And time was, people in such a situation comprised a big chunk of McDonald’s workforce,” he wrote.

“But that’s no longer the case. Many people who work at McDonald’s and other large low-wage employers are trying to support themselves and others. The fantasy budget suggests what most people already know: it is really, really hard to have a decent life when your hourly wages are low,” Gross added.